English source-aligned edition
Hartwig Gnade
Hartwig Gnade served as commander of the 2nd Company of Reserve Police Battalion 101. The profile reconstructs the person’s function in the Lublin District, Józefów Biłgorajski, Łomazy and Międzyrzec Podlaski through documented office, decisions, supervision or operational conduct. It does not assign every crime committed by an institution or region to one individual.
Confirmed findings
- He commanded the 2nd Company of Reserve Police Battalion 101 during its principal operations in the Lublin District, until May 1943.
- At Józefów on 13 July 1942, he assigned the 2nd Company to round up the Jewish population, take people to assembly points and transport them to the forest. After the assignment changed during the day, he divided policemen into execution groups, designated sectors of the forest and monitored how victims were brought to the sites.
- During the liquidation of the Łomazy ghetto in August 1942, he directed the 2nd Company's operations and, when the shooters brought from Trawniki did not continue the execution, ordered policemen from his own company to join the shootings.
- On 5 October 1942, he took part in a meeting lasting several hours that prepared another operation in Międzyrzec Podlaski, and subsequently supervised elements of the operation and the loading of deportees.
Place in the chain of responsibility
The profile shows how a company commander allocated tasks among cordons, transport and shooting groups, and made operational decisions during an action. Not every killing committed by the 2nd Company or by auxiliaries from Trawniki can be attributed to Gnade as a personal shooting; his command role and specific orders are documented.
Key events and mechanisms
- taking command of the 2nd Company of Reserve Police Battalion 101 before the battalion was sent to the Lublin District in 1942
- organising the roundup, transport and execution groups at Józefów on 13 July 1942
- directing the company's operation and ordering policemen to join the execution at Łomazy in August 1942
- participation in planning and supervising the deportation operation at Międzyrzec Podlaski in October 1942
- absence of reliable postwar accountability and an unresolved date of death
The circle records authority, function and agency. Several profiles may describe different parts of the same persecution chain, so profile-level totals must not be added together.
Postwar accountability
He did not stand trial. The sources used for this profile do not establish the date or circumstances of his death reliably; his individual responsibility was later reconstructed from the trials of other battalion members, unit records and historical research.
Limits of the evidence
Sources differ on the precise date of the Łomazy operation and the number of people murdered; the profile therefore gives the month and explains the mechanism without constructing a victim tally. The assigned sources do not confirm the date or circumstances of Gnade's death, so the profile does not repeat as fact a secondary claim that he died during the war. Later testimony by policemen requires critical reading because of the witnesses' interests in the criminal proceedings.
Sources
The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.